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Ah yes, I finally got to “Les Predateurs de la Nuit”, the last of this bunch of movies I watched, and man am I thankful for that for I was so done with them once I got to it because of how many similar titles I watched in a row, well that, and because this one is by far the worst one of them all.
Despite coming out twenty years later than “Corruption”, this is even the worst looking movie by far, cheap visuals, standard and uninspired aesthetics, poorly made action scenes, and even the backgrounds are boring to look at compared with all the previous films. “Les Yeux Sans Visage” and “Gritos en la noche” had gothic vibes in them, “Seddok, l’erede di Satana had a sci-fi vibe because of all the machinery the protagonist had, mixed with some beautiful landscapes from time to time, as it was the case most prominently in “Corruption”, here, the whole movie takes place inside a building, whether the clinic, or a nightclub, or something else, or a vehicle. Even the aspect that clearly the makers put the most effort in, the special effects, are by now super cheap and outdated. Like, I know, this is essentially a low budget French-Spanish horror b-movie, and I shouldn’t judge it by being spoiled due to all the mainstream cinema from the late 80s that I already watched, but even for its time, all the intended gruesome and shocking scenes come off as silly instead for how cheap everything looks. There is a moment when a face is taken off and you can tell right away that is a mask.
Want to talk about atmosphere? The soundtrack is good by itself but doesn’t fit at times (the ending in particular was funnily off), the sound effects sound as good as the ones used twenty years prior, and despite having the misfortune of watching a horribly dubbed English version, even I could tell that no one in the cast was trying just by looking at them.
But the worst aspect was the plot, which was a step back in quality from even the worst previous films. First of all, it adds nothing to try to change the formula, it takes a step back to the most basic form of it. Second, despite having an inspector, hired by the father of a girl that disappeared, investigating from the beginning, he is not very present in the film, and doesn’t get near the villains in organic ways at any point, he just appeared where he needed to be in the third act just because.
And third, just like with the visuals, the only thing the makers cared of, with the director being the same one that made “Gritos en la noche” (the best imitator of the original premise in its decade), was the gruesome aspects. The sister of the doctor gets attacked randomly in the beginning on a terrible scene, and he kills his patients to use the skin on his sister’s face, because he has bisexual incestuous threesomes with her and his girlfriend, and assistant. Gross. Aside from that, most of the film is just that, two characters seducing people and killing them in gruesome ways, which look cheap because of the poor visuals and special effects.
Even leaving that aside, several minor characters act very stupidly throughout the film, getting killed by the main cast for basically doing nonsensical things, something that could potentially apply even to the biggest antagonists. And the writing gets really bad in the last act, why would you kidnap, kill, and take the face of a famous actress? Unlike the nobodies from before, that will lead you to be found out for sure. The scene where they take her face off yet her eyes keep moving, you notice “the face “ is a mask, and then that “face” gets instantly put over the burnt face of the sister of the villain and fits in instantly, is the worst in the whole movie.
The only major change in the plot structure was the somewhat tragic ending, but even that was ruined by bad writing and an ambiguous ending which feels sequel-baity and even lasts more than it needs to before the credits roll (think about Batman & Robin for something similar).
So, despite being the latest of these kind of films (until 2011) it was actually the worst in every aspect and even a disappointment coming from the same director of “Gritos en la noche”. “Eyes Without a Face” is the only worth watching retro surgeon thriller/horror movie, the rest are mediocre at best or just plain suck.
3/10
